School Board Work Session   1/10/2024

Friday morning.

So welcome.

Thank you, and we have a quorum barely, so we may have some other amendments coming, but we're here and ready.

So if I may first have our clerk call roll for the Charlottesville City School Board members.

Yes, Mrs. Burns?

Mrs. Cooper?

Here.

Thank you.

I would, I don't know, Mayor, if you'd like to call roll.

Thomas, are we going to call roll today?

Mr. Payne?

Here.

Mr. Pinkston?

Here.

Here.

I would now entertain a motion from one of our school board members to approve our proposed agenda.

I move that we approve the proposed agenda.

But for the sake, I'll just say of myself, would you mind just quickly kind of interviewing some of your staff and the department leads that are here with us tonight?

budget.

The important stuff, all of it.

And Sam Saunders with the city manager.

And now I guess I'll turn it over to Dr. Gurley.

And first up, we have item 4.1, which is our Charlottesville Albemarle Technical Education Center update with Kim Powell.

I know you can't.

Whatever you want.

There you go.

So, if we

So happy to answer questions.

Because I think it was some concern that the county students would kind of drive that because of their numbers.

I don't know if that was helpful for you, but being able to point while I talk was super helpful for me.

So are there other counselors that have questions?

So anyway, kudos to you and your team for pulling this off.

Is that something that Albemarle has discussed as part of this at all in terms of even possible intention of constructing that and what that timeline may be?

Yes, but I think what we've heard from them is that right now there's no intention to do that because KTEC can continue to serve them well.

There are lots of different folks who see these opportunities for the great opportunities that they are and we're just excited to be able to serve in that role for the area.

Is there any kind of ballpark sense yet in terms of if there would be any CIP requests that would be necessary or what fiscal years those would come in at for the city?

you know pieces have been handled by the different partners and one that Mike Goddard and his team have been managing the roof replacements and the BAS upgrades and all of that for years so the good news is we didn't you didn't acquire this asset without knowing a lot about its condition there's not any like big capital maintenance items hanging over our heads if that's the question I mean the city's gained a great asset what happens with it in the future as far as programming or whatever

Yeah, I'm thinking more like proactive future investments about expanding programming or services on site.

And that'll be something I think advisory will be key in determining.

Okay, thank you.

The same student could take a couple of slots.

OK, great.

How many are there approximately total?

Right now we don't have 400 students at KTEC, but that we all agreed that was a round number that kind of in the middle of the maximum that it could support and kind of where we're operating, where we've been operating for the past several years or more.

Okay, thank you.

Sure.

So next on our agenda, we have 4.2, we have Mr. Trotter who will introduce you to our night school program.

I will be happy to take any questions if there are any.

Question.

Before 3-45.

But ultimately, sir, it's us trying to connect those young people that are not employed with job opportunities.

So what is an asynchronous learning opportunity?

What is an asynchronous learning opportunity?

Whatever that phrase was you just used.

So that's just one particular example of what we want to do outside of the confinements of the academic day.

I guess I was just, I'm not familiar with a lot of the educational terminology.

Yes, sir.

Asynchronous seems like a word that I don't understand how that fits in with what else you're doing.

Yeah, so it allows the students, and forgive me, I hope I'm answering it correctly, allows the students to work individually on a particular assignment or project outside of the academic days, more so what that looks like.

And I'm not an educator, but my daughter to figure that out.

How many students are actually in the program?

And so with that, as the students are placed to the night school, the ultimate goal is to have 30 coming from the division.

Do you feel like there's the need to like double or triple it at some point or?

And so that's ultimately where the vision and hope will be for the support of students in those particular measures.

Thank you.

Michael Kochis,

Do you have a sense in terms of what you would estimate the demand would be if there wasn't constraints in terms of physical location, staffing constraints, what that number of students you might estimate would be that would participate in the program?

And so I think that that's really unfortunate that we're now in a space where students and the community see the value, but we're having to turn those families and students away because we're limited by space.

need to be served that can't.

Mr. Trotter sees that number.

I think Miss Dooley had something to say.

I think that's another lingo when we have CTE for students, career and technical education, but certainly the adult aspect is on our minds as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so we're doing this in pockets where we can.

Are there kind of specific things in mind that you're thinking of in terms of what those expansion opportunities would be?

is a team of one and she could not do that with every family in our school division, but we do have an opportunity through our night school program and through our LMA program to offer some of those things so that we can become generational supports for our community.

Are there specific metrics you're looking at in terms of impact of the program, graduation rate, is it test scores, is it trying to develop metrics of post graduation outcomes or

I'm pretty sure that then I would have to share those particular metrics and expectations out to the division as well.

So all of these things are things that we can quantitatively communicate to any of our stakeholders to request that information.

Natalie?

And then also I love the name.

So I hope that answers that sort of the answers your question.

Yeah, there's a focus on the job portion, but there's also a focus on getting them back to class.

Absolutely.

which is another form of alternative learning which is already housed within CHS or it could be transitioning back to the high school and you still have KTEC as a part of that continuum of supports and services.

You're welcome.

Yes.

Thank you.

You know,

And so I don't know where you want to start in terms of that conversation.

I mean, we kind of had the preliminary drawings and fun, you know, dollar amount that that came from Mr. Knox and VMDO.

But maybe some of you all can remember some of the more.

Is there a plan?

OK.

Right.

Well, I don't know how current.

Well, I don't know either, because I haven't seen anything in the last year, year and a half, two years.

And so maybe Mr. Goddard can be more clear.

But Mike is going to frame what we know at this time as to what it costs, and then Chrissy will wrap up the grant aspect of it as well.

And that's taken into account reasonable cost escalation between now and when we kick the project off, which would be fiscal year 27.

So I like your numbers today better.

Well, we were when those numbers were put together, we were experiencing double digit escalation.

Yeah.

But I'm trying to also keep a little downward pressure on my team so that we don't get wild.

OK, thank you.

And an ideal, if money were no object, that's never the case, but if we could do this the way people wanted it to happen, what would be sort of some parameters?

I don't see any timeline issues.

Remind me when that was supposed to be done.

The next year, we spend renovating the existing building and making major renovations to the auditorium building.

Got it.

So that's the plan.

So that takes you to when?

August 2026.

In a perfect world, we could sort of overlap the design phase with the tail end of the construction phase, but my office can't manage those two very large projects at the same time, along with all the other things that we're doing.

Powell, is that part of the schedule you just mentioned, or is that a year after that?

You know, tenable for safety proofing.

It's actually coming from priority improvement.

Well, it's in the plan.

But we have a plan.

It's just this is not a space built for our youngest learners.

So 2627.

On on that note, can you give a brief recap of the adjustments that need to be made to this building besides like tiny toilets and tiny water fountains?

So it's really not it's not a big lift for us.

And that money is already programmed.

And we're using that for a couple of different other priority issues that have come up, including the CHS restrooms.

Thank you.

90, 95% confidence in that that's in kind of the ballpark of what we're.

But, you know, assuming that things stay within the realm of normal, I think 30 million is approximately your number, give or take what happens in the world.

And so it sounds like in terms of anything placed into our CIP budget, that would be placement of a number in FY 27, was

Yeah, I think that was when the ask was for 27.

Because I don't think this is a project that we want to not move forward on.

How much does that cost to get you that extra capacity to be able to, again, do these things concurrently, the design and the build?

But if you want to know the number, I could put it together for you.

And again, it sounds like you might need to make some investments in staff to be able to make that happen.

I don't think this is something we can kick down the road.

Sure.

All right.

And Sam, I don't know if you have more you want to add.

And then you will begin your deliberation of making some of those other decisions that you have to make as well.

But just, I don't think we've listed all those out and ranked them ourselves as council.

And meetings like this is vital to do that.

and we didn't have the slides that we received last week about the local composite index and our projected funding from the state as part of this and I'm not sure if council is interested in hearing those numbers at this meeting or if that's for our next one but I don't know if we have those slides that we can share if that's an appropriate time to talk about that because we you know it's not just the capital improvement plans that we're going to be needing funding for the state funding is a concern for us as well

Isn't that something I want to deal with at 6.30 at night?

Is that one like this one?

Dooley, is it

Hoover is probably over there, like stop talking.

for the locality and perceived income levels, perceived wealth of the locality in relation to every other locality in the state.

And so that all gets factored into affordability.

I see.

Is it possible that staff could look into that as another solution to, again, reduce that potential CIP budget and do a couple different things at the same time?

But yeah, it is something we're looking into and working with the Office of Sustainability on.

We've also engaged our financial advisor firm.

So we are covering that as well.

Thank you.

So I think there's a lot of potential also built into what this pre-K center and space could be.

But when you want to think really big picture, those are the kind of things that we sometimes bat around and dream about.

Thank you.

Any other questions from council?

No, I don't think this has been very helpful.

And we'll adjourn the meeting.